Radiohead: Kid A – Album of The Decade
In the fractured music business, everyone is searching for the magic bullet. After roughly fifteen years of online access, musicians and labels still struggle with the amorphous, asymmetrical world of the web. Because they haven’t taken time to research how music fans want to receive their music, they remain puzzled by just how much doesn’t work on the web. Having a MySpace page is not a digital strategy. The think tank needs to be drained and filled with new thinkers. The future of music distribution will be determined by music fans not by the latest web start up with yet another “solution” that looks and smells like the old “solutions” – I point my finger at you Rdio, you Mog.
It requires a huge leap of faith to break the stranglehold of the curse of knowledge. It requires new thinking to get beyond the CD. What’s not required are predictions for music in 2010. There is nothing new in that post, just a repurposing of old ideas.
Except for iTunes, in the last decade, it seemed that every new music model was simply a replica of what had gone before. Here’s a partial list – Rhapsody, EMusic, Mog, Rdio, Spotify if you want a subscription plan, or just a list of online music databases if you’d prefer. Yet really all you need is Google Music Search, where you can stream music from the search results page.
These services are all built on the backs of musicians and the deal they made with their labels to allow the aggregation of their music into these services. The end result is a shrinking income base as digital sales do not fill the gap that is widening as CD sales hit the floor.
The future may lie in the direct to fans sales model of a company like Topspin. Check out their case studies here. Basically offer your hardcore fan base, high-quality content at affordable prices, starting low and progressing all the way up to the biggest package. Topspin might just be the solution for musicians but I don’t want to play the prediction game.
For the last ten years the members of Radiohead have been experimenting with rock music. By drawing inspiration from electronic and jazz artists, using different instrumentation to keep things fresh and by basically caring deeply about their recorded output, they kicked off the decade with what is arguably the best rock album of the last ten years, Kid A. That link provides a great overview of how the album was conceived all the way through to its leaking on the Internet. Everything else that you’d want to know about Radiohead can be found here.
I have no best-of-the-decade list as music is too subjective. Any list that I could come up with would be about my musical taste, not the artists on the list. Instead I have concluded that Radiohead, who kept me most intrigued throughout the last ten years by consistently twisting and deconstructing my own ideas of rock music, surely deserves the accolade Band of The Decade. That feels too grandiose though, and inconsistent with what I think they are trying to achieve. I will declare though, that Kid A is my album of the decade.
Fire away.
Runners up: Burial – Untrue, Fever Ray – Fever Ray, D’Angelo – Voodoo
Band of the Decade: King Crimson.
Album of the Decade: The Power to Believe.
Cark has spoken
December 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pmHere are my two cents:
1. Most high visibilty, yet low-key reunion of the decade: Eno/Byrne
2. Silliest fun shiny disc of the decade–that 8-bit Beck EP
3. Guitar-centric downer of the decade: tie between Joe Strummer and Bo Diddley passing.
4. Most mean-spirited, yet somehow pathetically amusing music-related merch of the decade: The “Amy Crackhouse” t-shirt.
5. Unrealized Dada moment of the decade: Henry Rollins spoken word from Get In The Van never got mashed up with Barack Obama speeches with loops from It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back AND loops from any Porter Wagoner album circa 1967-1974.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:04 amThis seems a perfect place to post information that everyone who is anyone in music continues to ignore.
I am a 53-year old, white, middle class woman. I love all kinds of music. Radiohead, The Ting Tings, Bright Eyes, Lady Gaga, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, The Beatles…you name it. Paul Anka and Wayne Newton were never in my wheelhouse, but I do like Susan Boyle and look what she has achieved. Ambient, country, Americana, punk, whatever you call your music isn’t that important any longer.
When you look at the American consumer profile, and the broadest demographic base, music should be aimed at women from the Boomer era. Everyone knows women are the most targeted consumer in this country. There are roughly 78 million people from the Boomer generation. They account for about one third of the American population; and they collect music more than any other commodity. My husband buys tons of music…from country to metal to rock…he loves it all. He was born in 1950…you can do the math.
The sad fact is we find out about new music from our kids who make up a very thin slice of the total population. If music were just for kids, then logically a conglomerate like Mattell would be a great distributor. But music is for everyone. Taste in music is very subjective, so why has the marketing model failed? Because most of the population was left out of the equation.
Boomers are extremely progressive thinkers worldwide. They built the former music industry into what it was. A very smart move would be to flip the model and mirror marketing efforts back at this very population. We have computers, iPhones, every application under the sun because we can afford them. We do not pirate music, because we know someone is making their living from selling it. We go to concerts in all different price brackets in many different cities worldwide.
We’re not dead yet, and don’t plan to be for about another 30-40 years. I’m pretty sure music will help us live longer healthier lives. This is the most logical marketing platform there is left aside from giving away the farm.
And just so you know, we own all Radiohead’s records.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:44 pmJanet Hansen
Scout66.com
I’ve been tracking down Radiohead and Thom Yorke b-sides all day, thnaks for uploading the Harrowdown Hill Extended Mix, it’s the only one I haven’t been able to find.I agree about the b-sides. I generally love Radiohead b-sides. Generally b-sides just means throwaway, sure, but with Radiohead it doesn’t seem to be a matter of quality, it just seems that the b-sides aren’t as accessible so they tend to be more electronic and less melodic. In that way I think they’re better, but it could also be that I haven’t listened to each track 100 times yet.
November 16th, 2012 at 2:12 pm